the theatre on the hill

I am becoming once again accustomed to the office of the Arts Council of the Conejo Valley, my high school haunt. In true twilight zone fashion, the building is completely changed, yet the institution and all of its inhabitants remain the same. Some people have come and gone, and many are considerably older, but the overall feeling is nearly identical. The new building (this is the center where we performed the hospital play) is considerably more sterile than the old Janss house of my youth, and there are many more turns and twists in this maze of offices and computers and desks. The old center was only the Arts Council, this is the entire Recreation and Parks district, so there are all sorts of boss-monsters roaming the folded tunnels, just waiting to yell at somebody to yell at somebody to yell at somebody. But it is comfortable like an old stinky pair of sneakers, grey, tattered, and doodled upon with the imagination of a sixteen year old boy.

Today I cleared out the theatre and readied it for a children's string concert. At this moment I can faintly hear "ode to joy" vibrating through the plaster behind this rather futuristic flatscreen computer monitor, and it is truly astounding that sonic glow of nearly two hundred year old music in the hands of eleven year olds can affect me as strongly as it did just now.

It seems that this might be a steady job, at least until the end of the summer, when I visit Chicago and return with the hopes of working as a substitute teacher. I am taking the CBEST test in August, and assuming I do well I should be able to work pretty steadily as a sub. $100 a day isn't to bad, and it'll be nice to have some more teaching experience.

I am starting to set my goal crosshairs on another PhD program, this one being at Woods Hole oceanographic Institute/MIT. Might as well set the goals high, but if I can really excel at an MS, and more importantly do some good work (aka being published) it isn't inaccessible.

I am currently reading 'Master and Commander', 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World', an ecology textbook, a precalculus text, an evolutionary biology text, and the Earthsea books. My mind is nourished.

I gotta work. I'll post more later.